19 September 2007 WHY WAR IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA by Alice Walker, illustrated by Stefano Vitale, September 2007, ISBN: 978-0-06-075386-3

"And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates

Well, there ain't no time to wonder why, whoopee we're all gonna die"

-- Country Joe McDonald

"Though War speaks

Every language

It never knows

What to say

To frogs."

In her latest picture book, WAR IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA, Alice Walker personifies War, and through a series of verses she reveals the terrible costs and far reaching effects of War's behavior.

WAR IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA will undoubtedly be a very controversial book. I mean, it is one thing to argue over whether or not the war we are in right now is or ever was a good idea. But come on! If any of us were alive in America two hundred and thirty years ago, wouldn't we jump at the chance to get our hands on a muzzle-loading rifle and shoot a ball of lead through the facial features and cheekbone and into the brains of some British family's eighteen-year-old son? I don't care if you're male or female, when it came down to it and the rich white merchants and slave-owning planters had instigated a revolution, wouldn't you have been prepared and psyched to jam a bayonet through the clothing, skin, and stomach muscles, and then in through the vital organs of some teenage creep from across the ocean who was wearing the wrong color uniform?

"But if we didn't do it." students might argue in response, "We'd never have become free. We'd still be part of England now!"

And, responding back, I would offer to organize a debate on the subject after those students had taken the time to prepare by reading from a list of books about the ideas and politics and world events that led to the Revolutionary War such as Natalie Bober's COUNTDOWN TO INDEPENDENCE: A REVOLUTION OF IDEAS IN AMERICA AND HER AMERICAN COLONIES: 1760-1776, or Marc Aronson's THE REAL REVOLUTION: THE GLOBAL STORY OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.

"It's always the old to lead us to the war

Always the young to fall" -- Phil Ochs

Thus, a discussion of WAR IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA is likely to involve students questioning whether certain wars were actually good wars based upon good ideas, and the teacher or parent who has got his or her act together will channel that inquiry into student research in preparation for waves of great group learning. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about the Revolutionary War or Little Big Horn or Hitler or Vietnam there are great books in print that will lead students to root causes and -- if we're lucky -- have students recognize that something happened before the war to cause it and something happened before that which lead to the causes which led to the war (See my recent review of PREVIOUSLY by Allan Ahlberg.), and that what is going on in the country and the world today -- this very day -- will either lead to a future war somewhere for some reason or will not lead there based upon the decisions of those who we have elected to public office. Higher order thinking is necessary for students to achieve understanding of this Big Picture -- the interrelatedness of events large and small -- and there are many of us who would argue that the development of that sort of thinking does not come about by "teaching to the test." And so this book might be additionally controversial because it could lead to debates over educational philosophies and whether or not we are at all preparing students to be problem solvers who can recognize and assess the Big Picture or are just creating human fodder for the next War.

"Though War has a mind of its own

War never knows

Who

It is going

To hit."

What should not be controversial about WAR IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA is the artwork by Stefano Vitale. In 1995, during my very first season as a Children's Buyer, I was (pardon the pun) blown away by Vitale's paintings that reillustrated Charlotte Zolotow's WHEN THE WIND STOPS, a picture book I'd first read as a young child. The paintings that he has done for WAR IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA are the best work I've seen of his, and I'm seriously thinking about reproducing the last painting -- a circle of faces peering down into a well that has been contaminated by War -- to make myself a custom teeshirt.

"Though War is Old

It has not

Become wise

It will not hesitate

To destroy

Things that

Do not

Belong to it

Things very

Much older

Than itself."

Oh...dear. I was just paging through again, feasting my eyes on those paintings, and I found this verse accompanied by a painting of ruins with a statue from which the head has been detached and the body of the statue has...err...breasts. So, I suppose the paintings are going to be controversial in some quarters as well.

"He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,

a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew

and he knows he shouldn't kill

and he knows he always will

kill you for me my friend and me for you" -- Donovan

You'd think that a Black woman like Alice Walker -- the Pulitzer prize-winning author of THE COLOR PURPLE would have at least thought that the Civil War was a good idea. But, then again, I expect she knows that if we had not fought the Revolutionary War and had remained part of England, then slavery would have been ended a generation earlier without a war, just as it did in England. Sound like a topic for debate?

"Though War has a mind of its own

War never knows

Who

It is going

To hit."

One of my biggest dreams has just come true for me. I am getting to develop and teach an online class in the spring through San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science on Picture Books for Older Readers. Thanks to Alice Walker and Stefano Vitale, I now have a book to share for my opening class meeting.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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